Andrew Feiler

Andrew Feiler is a photographer and author and fifth generation Georgian. Having grown up Jewish in Savannah, he has been shaped by the rich complexities of the American South. Feiler has long been active in civic life. He has helped create over a dozen community initiatives, serves on multiple not-for-profit boards, and is an active advisor to numerous elected officials and political candidates. His art is an extension of his civic values. Feiler’s newest book of photography, A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America, was published in 2021 by the University of Georgia Press. This work is the first comprehensive photodocumentary of the program created by Tuskegee Institute principal Booker T. Washington and Sears, Roebuck & Company president Julius Rosenwald. From 1912 to 1937, this collaboration built 4,978 schools for African American children across 15 southern and border states and transformed America. The book is now in its third printing. Feiler was named “Book Photographer of the Year” by Prix de la Photographie Paris in 2022 and A Better Life for Their Children won the gold medal for documentary book. The book also won the International Photography Awards (IPA) 2022 first place for documentary book. It has been honored with an Eric Hoffer Award, an Axiom Award Gold Medal, and a Book, Jacket, and Journal Award from the Association of University Presses. Photolucida named Feiler’s Rosenwald school images a 2020 Top 50 portfolio and Photoville selected them for the 2020 edition of The Fence, an outdoor exhibition displayed internationally in eleven cities. The solo exhibition of this work is now on tour. Feiler’s earlier book, Without Regard to Sex, Race, or Color, was also published by the University of Georgia Press. Focused on the largely abandoned campus of an historically black college, this body of artistic documentary photography offers a new way into the debate raging in our society about the essential role education has played as the foundation of the American Dream. Feiler’s photographs have been instrumental in the campaign to create a new US national historical park and inspired the composition of a symphony. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, L’Œil de la Photographie, Architect, Preservation, The Forward as well as on CBS This Morning, PBS, and NPR. His prints have been displayed in galleries and museums including solo exhibitions at such venues as the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, and International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, NC. His photographs are in public and private collections including that of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Feiler earned his bachelor’s in economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a master’s in modern history from Oxford University and a master’s in business administration from Stanford University.